Stephen M. Kohn is a partner in the whistleblower law firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Whistleblower Center. He has represented whistleblowers since 1984, setting numerous precedents and winning landmark cases on behalf of corporate, government, qui tam, tax fraud and SEC whistleblowers. He was peer-review rated by the National Law Journal as one of the 50-top plaintiff’s lawyers in the United States, the only whistleblower rights lawyer to achieve this distinction.
Qui Tam Practice: Stephen Kohn won the largest qui tam whistleblower reward ever given to a single individual ($104 million to Swiss bank Bradley Birkenfeld). Kohn won one of the highest SEC whistleblower awards and served as lead counsel in a qui tam whistleblower case alleging that a leading Japanese manufacturer was responsible for selling thousands of defective bulletproof vests to police departments and the military. After ten years of litigation, the whistleblower won, triggering millions of dollars in damages to both the whistleblower and taxpayers.
SEC Practice: In addition to winning one of the largest Dodd-Frank Act whistleblower reward cases, Stephen Kohn worked directly with the U.S. Congress in drafting the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Act whistleblower protection provisions. Kohn was among the leading whistleblower advocates participating in the SEC’s initial whistleblower rulemaking proceedings, meeting one-on-one with each Commissioner, and filing numerous written submissions relied upon by the Commission in crafting the final rules.
Publications: Kohn’s eighth book on whistleblower law is the highly respected The New Whistleblower’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What’s Right and Protecting Yourself (Lyons Press, 2017), rated by the PEN Center as among the top ten books ever written on whistleblowers. In 1985 Kohn wrote the first-ever legal treatise on whistleblower law. Kohn teaches a seminar on whistleblower law at the Northeastern University School of Law.
